—Yes?
—Well, what is his job?
—A little bit of everything. Mostly, Ben stays busy making himself indispensable.
Florida explained how some while back, Joseph bought Ben out of Virginia, just across the Potomac from Washington. He arrived in Mississippi knowing how to read and write, and he was especially good with numbers. Then before long Ben began drawing architectural plans for outbuildings with compasses and rulers and squares. He learned how to survey land in no time—all that complicated business of rods and chains and that strange device on its tripod. But before all that, Ben hadn’t been at the Bend much over a month when he ran. He was caught in Vicksburg trying to pass as free, looking for a job on a northbound riverboat. When he got hauled back to Davis Bend, Joseph didn’t whip him. They had a meeting in the office, just the two of them, and the way they both tell it, Joseph asked Ben to name the source of his displeasure. Ben said he preferred the city life.
—Oh, please, V said. My experience may be limited, but I won’t believe just anything. That is not the way it goes.
—I’m not making this up. They worked out some compromise between them. Soon Benjamin was married to a pretty girl named Edella and was keeping the books for all Joseph’s holdings and running the plantation store—eventually with a cut of the profits. He has free run of Joseph’s library and collects books of his own. Gets paid cash for some of his work, and uses some of his money to buy Edella’s time back from Joseph—so she can stay home and care for their new baby. He’s made himself so necessary to the running of The Hurricane that Joseph’s recently taken out a fat insurance policy on his life. Joseph can leave for any stretch of time and Ben runs the whole place, and writes reports and asks permission for big expenditures but decides the smaller ones himself.
—You’re making all this up.
—Am not. This place is strange aplenty.
V FIRST SAW UNCLE JEFF riding through the front gates of The Hurricane on a thoroughbred, a chestnut mare, her coat gleaming when the sun hit. He was a fine horseman—perfect equitation, straight relaxed posture in the saddle—though she saw he was showing off, using a lot of leg urging the mare forward and at the same time using the reins to hold her back, collecting her energy and releasing it, trying to make her look harder to ride than she was. But still, he looked beautiful on a horse. Even during the war when he was tired and sick and half blind, he rode for hours almost daily.
V guessed he was about her mother’s age—late thirties—and was surprised he could still maintain so athletic an aspect. Once he set foot on the ground, though, he lost something and became just a slim, middle-size man. She noticed right away his stacked boot heels lifting him an inch higher than reality and wondered what that might say about him, whether he was a fop or had a streak of bantam rooster in him.
The more she saw as he handed the reins to a bondman and walked to the house, the real issue wasn’t really his height. It was his slightness, how finespun his bones must be. Later—bad times during the war and worse times after—he didn’t eat much and wouldn’t have gone a hundred twenty even after one of Mary Chesnut’s feasts, when oysters and turkeys and ducks and doves and bowls of fresh vegetables cooked shiny in pork fat appeared magically out of the scarcity of war. But that first moment she saw him, he carried a little more muscle, say one-forty.
Just before Jeff walked within earshot, Florida said, very dry and ironic, Your Romantic poet arrives. Then she raised her voice so that Jeff could hear her say, Oh, look! He’s out of mourning at last.
V turned to Florida in confusion, and Florida laughed at the confusion she intended to create.
Then to Jeff, Florida said, Good Lord, brighten up. You’re here to meet a pretty girl, not be the subject for a hanging. Cousin Jeffy, darling, I keep trying to tell you how to avoid that preying viper melancholy. It’s simple. Follow my six commandments. Cherish ambition. Cherish pride. Don’t mope. Dismiss the past, because it’s gone for good. Do not defer pleasure whenever and wherever it rears its smiling face. Run from excitement to excitement until the clock winds down. But you can’t seem to learn any but the second commandment. You’re the damned slowest student in the class.
Jeff glanced at V as Florida talked, and then he climbed the steps and removed his flat-brimmed hat and kissed Florida’s cheeks. All smiles and manners—he welcomed V with a quick touch of hands. His hair lay mashed all around by the hatband, and he ran his fingers through it. He wore an unusual cravat, brighter and puffier and more patterned than the current fashion, a sort of peachy color, and it wrapped his neck almost to his sharp jawline. He wore not a hint of black.
Florida swept her hand toward another rocker and said, Join us, Cousin. Since that’s why you saddled your best horse and rode all this way.
—Uncle, he said.
Florida, acting for just the audience of V and Jeff, said, That always sounds so strange, calling you Uncle, since my daddy is more like your daddy than your brother. I’ve decided from now on we’re going to ignore our ridiculous family tree. Too much complication. Girls so young and Old Joe so old. And you’re tending in that direction too if we don’t do something about it. I plan to young you up. As relationships go, Uncle sounds old and imposes a distance and protocol, sets limits that Cousin doesn’t. Way out here in the jungle, I understand cousins even marry now and then. So no arguments, no witness
